UK authorities drug-trafficking and money-laundering

Illegal drugs trafficking and money laundering by the British police force

The Metropolitan Police, the London-based flagship constabulary of the British police force, has been criticised by a Judge for running a multi-million pound illegal drugs cartel and money laundering operation, without permission. (Yes, they usually have permission to do so, particularly through "Special Branch" -- a secretive police department closely associated with British intelligence.)

It is common practice for the British authorities to set up and operate drugs and money laundering cartels. Without the full cooperation of customs officials and law enforcement agencies it would obviously be extremely risky, and preclusively difficult to import the huge quantities drugs required to sustain the lucrative UK black-market.

Undercover operations provide a superb cover for the highly profitable government-controlled drug trade. Individual petti drug dealers are arrested so that operations in which police mingle with criminals can be called a success. Any drugs cartel that dares to compete with the state-sponsored operation is dealt with swiftly and effectively, either through the courts or by the "gang-land" killings that we have all learned to accept in the daily news. Whether or not police officers who associate with criminals are tempted toward corruption, wittingly or unwittingly they act as cogs in the mechanism of the criminal underworld. In reality, these operations do not reduce crime, they actively and prolifically create it. Where do all the profits go?

This case only made the headlines because lawyers, acting for criminals who the police used for a year and then arrested, called for an inquiry. The Judge subsequently announced that the police forgot to obtain permission from "the Director of Public Prosecutions, the Head of the Crown Prosecution Service, the Treasury Counsel, or senior barristers who advise the government." This standard response is carefully worded to mislead ordinary members of the public. It does not say that the authorities would not approve such an operation, only that they did not in this case. Most people will conclude that the police would never be allowed to be involved in crime.

The latest court case lasted 400 days and cost £25 million pounds. Nobody was convicted, and of course there was never any question of putting police officers on trial for the many tonnes drugs they knowingly sold or the multi-millions of money they knowingly laundered.

As usual the ordinary people, tax payers, drug addicts and the victims of their petti crimes, will have to pay for the rich men's games.

Scotland Yard claimed last night that the future of covert police work was under threat after a court ruling that some of its officers had committed a "state-created crime" during a sting aimed at trapping suspected money launderers.

A total of £15m was brought to London hidden in suitcases, laundered by undercover police officers and then returned to alleged drug dealers over a three year period, the court heard.

A prosecution based on the sting was thrown out at Southwark crown court yesterday after a judge described the police actions as "massively illegal".

Judge George Bathurst-Norman allowed 10 defendants to walk free after saying that the police had "overstepped the line between legitimate crime detection and unacceptable crime creation".

"I have come to the conclusion that what the police did amounted to state-created crime."

In a statement, Mr Bossino's solicitors, Burton Copeland, called for an inquiry "into how the Metropolitan police thought it fit to conduct an illegal and unauthorised undercover money laundering operation for so many years.

"In this case it has been found that the Metropolitan police, considering themselves to be above the law, have committed serious criminal offences both in the United Kingdom and Gibraltar.